On the Night of the Ball
by froodlemonkey
Summary: When a blue moon hangs full and round over the dark waters of Lake Eerie, the werewolves and the unicorns hold a dance contest on the shore.


When a blue moon hangs full and round over the dark waters of Lake Eerie, the werewolves and the unicorns hold a dance contest on the shore. The jackalopes steer clear, but the mermaids swim close to the water's edge and sing bawdy sailor shanties to encourage their favourites to dance well. The ghost ship Jolly Roger anchors a little way out and her crew of spectral pirates lean over the railings to join in, and they swap rum and ship's biscuit for pearls and sea shells.

The dance is less than a century old, but it was established to mark the end of a millenia of war between the two species. Now, it is a chance for the young people of both houses to show off their skills without reigniting a blood feud that had claimed the lives of many of their ancestors. The mermaids see it as a reason to eat hotdogs and wave novelty fingers made of seafoam to show whether they root for Team Werewolf or Team Unicorn.

For Marshall, who had heard about the dance from a psychic hedgehog, who learned about it from a zombie seagull, who was told the tale by the ghost of a ship's cat, who had seen it firsthand aboard the Jolly Roger, it was a golden opportunity to get proof of Eerie's weirdness, live and on camera.

Now the camera lay shattered on the sandy earth, trampled to pieces by golden hooves that looked much too delicate and finely-wrought to inflict so much damage, and a hundred pairs of ancient, unfathomable eyes were fixed on a solitary human boy who stammered excuses and strained against the grip of the two immortal creatures holding him in place.

The wolf girls, who had arrived at the dancing late and tumbled from their cars already naked and bloody from earlier revels, were for letting him go. He was too young, they said, too small, and besides, who would believe him, especially in this town? One of them, who would be beautiful when the bones of her wolf's skull wasn't pushing against the flesh of her human face, grinned at him with a mouthful of yellow fangs and said she was sure they'd run into him again. He had flushed, frightened and embarrassed and excited all at once, and she laughed, taking a long pull from a pastel pink hip flask that she couldn't possibly have had on her a moment ago.

The unicorn dancers argued for killing him, because unicorns remembered when humans would hunt them by using virgin children carrying golden bridles as decoys. It was embarrassing for everyone, and usually the captured unicorn wound up a meal to some dark mage or other, and from there it was misery and a disconcerting lack of noses for everyone concerned.

The wolves who had danced hooted derision and accused the unicorns of being pampered, frightened babies. The unicorns pawed the ground and tossed their rainbow manes, and said it was hardly their fault if werewolf meat had no magical properties, and tasted rank besides.

The mermaids oooh'd in appreciation and one of them shouted "Burn!" in a passable imitation of Ashton Kutcher.

Back and forth went the arguments, petty squabbles long buried now brought to light, jeering insults tossed between the two tribes in the guise of a debate.

Eventually, the Elders of each people reached a compromise. A blood price must be paid, they said. The dance was, after all, sacred. Tonight's interference had disrupted an already delicate balance between two great nations, and for that, there would be a reckoning.

At a nod from the Elders, Marshall's captors flung him down and pinned him there. A massive paw rested on his left shoulder, a cloven hoof on his right, both the size of dinnerplates. The werewolf's eyes were yellow-green, and his breath stank of raw meat. The unicorn's eyes were the stormy grey of a running sea, and his breath was like jasmine; sweet, but with the trace of rot beneath it.

The unicorn's horn pierced through his right upper arm a moment before the werewolf's fangs sank into the meat of his left, and when Marshall screamed, the jackalopes, miles away and hiding deep in their burrows, started up with fear.

Simon found him the next morning, pale and sick and smeared with blood and glitter left over from the dancing. The wounds were already beginning to heal; by the time they staggered through Marshall's front door in the late afternoon, there was only a silver crescent moon scar to mark the bite, and a patched of raised skin, shaped like a star and multi-coloured like an old bruise, where the stab wound had been.

The next blue moon, Dash X laughs himself sick when a frantic and incoherent Simon drags him up the stairs to the Teller's attic and shows him a rainbow-maned, golden-hoofed unicorn with bushy brown sideburns and a familiar key around it's neck.


End file.
